Taylor Swift's new album, The Tortured Poets Department, dominated the new music discourse this past weekend, breaking Spotify's single-day streaming record of 300 million streams and selling 1.4 million copies on CD, vinyl, cassette, and digital download on its first day of release (April 19).
After giving fans 15 more songs than they expected, Swift is ready to give fans another bonus in an exclusive track-by-track experience.
Amazon Music subscribers can now listen to the full album along with commentary from Swift herself, sharing stories about and breaking down the meaning of each track. In order to experience this feature, fans can say “Alexa, I’m a member of ‘The Tortured Poets Department'” to any Alexa-enabled device.
For the album's lead track, "Fortnight," featuring Post Malone, she says, “‘Fortnight’ is a song that exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album. One of which being fatalism — longing, pining away, lost dream. I think that it’s a very fatalistic album in that there are lots of very dramatic lines about life or death. ‘I love you, it’s ruining my life.’ These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say. It’s that kind of album.”
Swift also admits "Florida!!!," her collaboration with Florence + The Machine, came from witnessing reports about how criminals often flock to the Sunshine State to disappear.
“I’m always watching Dateline," she says. "People have these crimes that they commit; where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in. I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.’ And so that was the jumping off point. Where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida!”
You can check out the "Taylor Swift Track by Track" experience here.
See a clip of Taylor Swift giving a break down of her song "Down Bad" below.